The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

City board freezes rents for stabilized apartments

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 04:55 PM PDT

For the next year, landlords cannot automatically increase rents on stabilized apartments. The Rent Guidelines Board voted 6-3 Wednesday night to freeze rents for one-year leases and for the first year of two-year leases. During the second year of two-year agreements, landlords can bump rent up by 1 percent. The board approved a freeze on stabilized hotel units as well. The board’s two landlord representatives asked for an increase of 2 percent on one-year leases

Toby Moskovits’ Bushwick Generator thrown into receivership

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 02:30 PM PDT

After months of legal wrangling and allegations of collusion and predatory lending, Heritage Equity Partners will lose control of its office development at 215 Moore Street in Bushwick. Judge Leon Ruchelsman has granted lender Fortress Investment Group’s motion to appoint a receiver for the property, which is subject to a defaulted $32.6 million mortgage. His May 22 decision was disclosed Wednesday. Over the past year, Heritage principals Toby Moskovits and Michael Lichtenstein have been coping

TRD Insights: Focus may shift to Manhattan’s 3 transport hubs in post-Covid office market

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 02:00 PM PDT

A new research report from Colliers International takes a deep dive into the supply of office space within walking distance of Manhattan’s three major regional transport hubs: Grand Central and Penn stations, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It arrives as New York City approaches Phase 2 of its reopening in the wake of the coronavirus shutdowns, with the subway system emerging as a key concern facing office workers looking to return in the coming

Housing starts are still low, but jump in permits suggest builders are planning

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 01:45 PM PDT

The latest federal numbers show that homebuilders are planning more construction than expected, but actual construction is lagging. The Commerce Department reported this week that construction permits rose 14.4 percent month-over-month in May, above economists’ 10.8 percent projection, according to the Wall Street Journal. Housing starts however were up just 4.3 percent, well below the 22.3 percent projected and nowhere near enough to make up for April 26.4 percent decline in starts brought on by

WATCH: LA luxury market snapshot with Jade Mills, Rayni Williams, Stephen Shapiro & Josh Flagg

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 01:01 PM PDT

Los Angeles luxury brokers increasingly talk of the pent-up demand for home buying that the coronavirus has created and how the pandemic has added to the L.A. market’s appeal. But dig deeper, and even top agents express concern about how business will unfold during the public health catastrophe, economic tailspin, and nationwide reckoning with racism and law enforcement. And then there is the potential recurrence of the virus. “I think everybody is now worried about

NYC’s lockdown will count as one day on the market for resi listings

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 01:00 PM PDT

In the annals of New York City’s residential market, “New York on Pause” will be reduced to one day on the market. As the city began to shut down to slow the spread of Covid-19 in March, the Real Estate Board of New York ordered the 90 companies that publish listings from its Residential Listing Service to stop displaying the “days on market metric.” Now, as the five boroughs near the second phase of reopening

Desperate landlord gets de Blasio’s sympathy, not much else

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 11:15 AM PDT

A landlord at the end of his rope managed to bring his tale of woe directly to Bill de Blasio this week, but the mayor offered little besides pity in response. The property owner’s missive was delivered by 1010 WINS reporter Juliet Papa during the mayor’s daily media briefing Tuesday, three months into the citywide shutdown of non-essential businesses. “I’m a commercial landlord and three of my largest tenants are day care centers. They’ve been

Is Covid taking the T out of TAMI?

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 10:45 AM PDT

For those in the very physical world of commercial real estate, recent news from one of the internet’s largest companies has been hard to swallow. Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that many of Facebook’s 48,000 employees can work from home indefinitely — while the social media giant taps pools of talent in smaller markets — has rattled office landlords and many of their brokers. The decision, which Zuckerberg made public in late May, echoed similar messages from

Trump Organization asks lenders for relief on UES building

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 10:00 AM PDT

The Trump Organization joins the ranks of landlords seeking relief from their loan obligations this spring. The company, run by President Donald Trump’s sons, asked lenders for relief due to Covid-19 on a loan against its retail space at the base of Trump Plaza on the Upper East Side, Bloomberg reported. The terms sought or concessions agreed to were not made public. Retail tenants at the property include a vitamin shop, Mephisto shoe outlet and

Douglas Elliman agent allegedly created scheme to pocket commission advances: lawsuit

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 09:15 AM PDT

A South Florida real estate agent has found himself at the center of yet another lawsuit. This time, a commission advance company is alleging Dedric Copeland conned the firm out of advances totaling $420,000 by bringing fake buyers to the company, including the rapper Shaggy and a wealthy Texas oil tycoon with ties to the Saudi royal family. Residential Advance, which advances agents commissions by charging a fee, is suing Copeland, a Douglas Elliman agent,

Nassau Coliseum shutdown throws wrench into RXR project

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 08:35 AM PDT

Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is closing Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum indefinitely, citing Covid-19. Prokhorov’s company Onexim Sports and Entertainment operates the venue under a lease and is seeking investors to take it over, along with about $100 million in loan obligations, Bloomberg reported. “The unforeseeable and unprecedented Covid-19 crisis has had a devastating effect on the operations of the Coliseum and its finances,” the company said in a statement to Bloomberg. “While we still believe in

Compass’ hunt for a securities attorney reignites talk of IPO

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 08:00 AM PDT

Compass is beefing up its in-house legal team and seeking expertise a public company would require. A new job posting reveals that the brokerage is seeking a securities lawyer who specializes in meeting U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and stock exchange reporting and compliance requirements, Inman reported. The potential new hire revives the looming question of if and when Compass will go public. The brokerage’s last fundraising round was in July 2019, when it raised

Another blow to Amazon in court battle with Durst Organization

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 07:30 AM PDT

Amazon is running out of moves to defend against the Durst Organization, which is suing the e-commerce giant over a scuttled lease deal. Most recently, a judge denied an appeal by Amazon that followed a ruling favorable to Durst, according to Commercial Observer. Durst is seeking $21 million in damages after the commercial landlord kept 310,000 square feet of space at 1133 6th Avenue vacant for Amazon and made modifications, before Amazon had a change

Nearly 1 in 4 New Yorkers skipped rent in June: survey

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 07:00 AM PDT

Nearly 25 percent of New York City renters have yet to make rent payments in June, according to one industry group’s survey. The rent collections tallied by the Community Housing Improvement Program — which represents the owners of 400,000 rent-stabilized units, or a slice of the city’s 3 million units — varied widely. For some landlords, the drop-off was particularly acute: Nearly a fifth of those surveyed reported rent collections less than 60 percent of

WeWork in talks to offer classroom space for NYC private schools

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 06:30 AM PDT

WeWork is hitting the books this summer. The office giant is in talks with New York City private schools to turn some offices into classrooms, WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani said during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Mathrani said the pandemic has given rise to the need for flexible space and pointed to the talks with private schools as one example of how WeWork’s product would find utility in this new

TRD Insights: This is what office tenants are paying to lease up 55 Hudson Yards

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 06:00 AM PDT

Just a few months before apparently souring on the concept of physical office space, Facebook was the latest high profile office tenant to sign on for Related’s Hudson Yards megadevelopment, taking up a total of 1.5 million square feet at 30, 50 and 55 Hudson Yards. Months later, in the early days of coronavirus’ rapid spread in New York City, one of Facebook’s new neighbors at 55 Hudson Yards — Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management

Inside the “legacy” hotel assets Colony Capital is pivoting away from

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 05:30 AM PDT

Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital has spent the last several years pivoting away from “legacy” real estate assets toward digital properties like cell phone towers, optic fiber networks and data centers. But the investment firm still has billions of dollars in legacy properties on its books, which have been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. In May, the Los Angeles-based company announced that $3.2 billion of consolidated debt in its hotel holdings — out of a

Rent law’s unanswered questions vex landlords, tenants

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 05:00 AM PDT

When state legislators set out to change New York’s rent law, Two Trees Management was not concerned about its portfolio. The developer does not invest heavily in rent-stabilized properties. “We didn’t think that the changes initially would impact us,” said David Lombino, managing director of external affairs at Two Trees. “And I don’t think it was the intention of legislators to do so.” But when lawmakers eliminated high-rent decontrol in the Housing Stability and Tenant

Group launches campaign to save Gowanus rezoning

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 04:30 AM PDT

The city’s Gowanus rezoning may be on life support, but one pro-development group is working to revive it. Open New York, a volunteer group that focuses on changing the city’s zoning laws to allow for more housing, launched a letter-writing campaign this week encouraging the city to move forward with its plan to rezone the Brooklyn neighborhood despite the pandemic bringing the process to a halt. The organization describes Gowanus as “the only affluent, majority-white,

Mortgage applications to buy homes hit 11-year high

Posted: 17 Jun 2020 04:00 AM PDT

Homebuyers haven’t been this busy looking for financing in more than a decade. An index tracking mortgage applications to buy single-family homes rose 4 percent, seasonally adjusted, last week from the first week of June. Though the Mortgage Bankers Association’s metric has been logging gains for nine consecutive weeks, the volume of purchase applications last week was the greatest since 2009. “The housing market continues to experience the release of unrealized pent-up demand from earlier